The “Crime-Fighting” Cameras that are saving lives…

The Gauteng Provincial Government has been tapping into a vast CCTV camera network to fight the high levels of crime in the province. In this interview with BizNews, Michael Varney, the Chief Commercial Officer of Vumacam, details the size of the network which has spread throughout Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, Mogale - and now even into the Western Cape where it has planted its first network in conjunction with the Saldanha Bay Municipality. He details the “multitude of successes” achieved with the public-private partnership in Gauteng where it has been able to reduce response times from 18 to 30 minutes down to five to 10 minutes. As for the technology, apart from number plate recognition cameras, there are also overview cameras that pick up suspicious behaviour as well as smoke in a city notorious for building fires. “…the minute smoke is picked up, we're able then to create an alert and dispatch appropriately, leading to enormous successes in the prevention of the loss of life.”